


the fear in your skin

by nereid



Category: Questionable Content
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-09
Updated: 2015-10-09
Packaged: 2018-04-25 13:46:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 684
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4962922
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nereid/pseuds/nereid
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When you think about yourself, and mostly you do this when there is nothing else left to think about, you think that if anyone asked you to describe yourself to them by comparing yourself to any paraphernalia, you would like very much to tell them that you are one of those expensive, special pens: you know the type: you can use them in outer space and they work upside-down, unlike all the other pens.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the fear in your skin

When you think about yourself, and mostly you do this when there is nothing else left to think about, you think that if anyone asked you to describe yourself to them by comparing yourself to any paraphernalia, you would like very much to tell them that you are one of those expensive, special pens: you know the type: you can use them in outer space and they work upside-down, unlike all the other pens. You like the comparison and you're proud of coming up with it. 

 

No one ever asks.

 

Your name is Hannelore Ellicott-Chatham and when your father sits in a white, metal chair next to your bed, as he's been known to do, though on an admittedly rare occasion, he tells you that the first thing you ever knew how to say properly was your name. From all you know about child development, this doesn't sound like the truth to you and it wouldn't sound like the truth to anyone with the knowledge of your full name. (There are not many who can say they have that knowledge.) But still, the idea is sort of poetic and it's neat, and you like it, so you decide to keep it.

 

Well - you do not keep it, really, because you're not sure how one would go around keeping words. If you type or print them, one neat letter after the other, _H-a-n-n-e-l-o-r-e-E-l-l-i-c-o-t-t-C-h-a-t-h-a-m_ , because you practiced your penmanship until you reached the optimum levels of roundness of your Os and the straightness of your Ts - the words belong to the computer screen then or to the paper and a bit to your pen, for a few moments at least. And if you say the words out loud, they belong to the air around you and to the ears of the person listening (you, always you) but this is only fleeting too.

 

And if the vowels that make you sometimes seem to stall on your lips while forming you, well, that's alright too. Maybe it means you are slow, which is not necessarily bad, everything you like will always last longer and you try to like things, like Station recommends. Or maybe your lips are trying to keep this truth a secret, if that's what it is anyway. (It's not. But it's neat, which is as close as you think you'll get.)

 

You want to be everything when you grow up. You are nine, you know about these things. About growing up and doing grown up things and doing many other kinds of things. Or at least, this is something you like to think or at least think _about_ , on those frequent quiet mornings and mid-days and afternoons and evenings and nights, when you're lying on your bed, looking at your ceiling looking back at you.

 

Station tries playing some music for you once.   
Music is invisible cosmic falling all over you.

 

Everything here is always clean and you slip on the freshly polished tiles that one time, just after dawn. Your blood drips on the tiles and this is the reddest thing you've seen in your life. You scream until your father is awake and comes to get you.

 

You think sometimes you would like to be a dragon when you grow up. You had this picture book with a dragon when you were five and you read it every night for a month.

 

You think about these things. There's a lot of time to think when you're nine and live on a space station and sometimes you don't remember things because you've been sedated for weeks on end.

 

You read, though. This you can do. Books are safe, they're just words and words won't hurt you. You read about space and the planets and the stars and cosmic dust and Earth. You read about dragons, all books you can find.

 

There are some things all books about dragons have in common. All dragons are dangerous. All dragons are survivors. All dragons escape their cages.

 

You are eighteen when you first come to Earth.  
You want to spread your wings.   
You want to breathe fire.


End file.
